


(epilogue) i was your grief

by ultraviolence



Series: so many constellations [5]
Category: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel - James Luceno, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Friends to Lovers to Enemies, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Past and Present, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10469655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: Then: they were young, untouched by the war or the horrors of the galaxy, Galen’s dreams like stars, his fingers arranging them into marvellous constellations.Now: a storm outside, a top-secret research faculty, a void between them. //In which the Advanced Weapons Research Director met his former friend and old lover. T for kissing and implications of (past) sex. Set sometime before the movie's Eadu scene. Could be read as a standalone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, it certainly took me forever to wrap up this series. I'm so sorry! I kind of got swept into the Jynnic train. I'd recommend reading [this](http://officialvoid.co.vu/post/155025061119/ethel-baraona-paul-celan-always-maelinoe) poem here before reading, since it directly inspired this particular chapter (and also obviously the title). Special thanks to @archistratego (at tumblr) & @ellstra for proofreading this. Enjoy!

The project was beyond anything Krennic could ever dream of.

Certainly, it was beyond anything he’d dreamt of during his school days, or even as a boy. He never fancied himself much of a dreamer—the term reeked of intellectual if not outright physical laziness, in his opinion—although, like everyone else, he certainly dreams. But he preferred to be known— _remembered_ —as a builder, if not visionary. Sometimes he wondered if talent followed aspirations, or if it was the other way around.

The planet, on the other hand, was rain-soaked and wind-swept. TIE Strikers patrolled the atmosphere, while a Star Destroyer loomed above the planet. Despite its official designation for research and chemical processing, there are secrets at work here, secrets hidden by perpetual thunder and gloomy clouds. If, say, the man now known as Director Orson Krennic didn’t have a one-track mind, if, say, he was interested in things beyond his dreams—ironically—he would have wondered what other secrets the planet might have hidden, in its treacherous soil, among its rocks, whispered between the small community of primitive natives when they huddled together at night, in their huts, with TIE Strikers patrolling above them in-between bouts of thunder.

But such imagination should be left to other men. Director Krennic was planetside, during one of those occasions where he felt that he needed to supervise one of the group of researchers that he shepherded for this project. Like any good shepherd, he knows when to keep a close eye on his herd.

And like any good shepherd, he doesn’t play favourites.

He was sitting in one of the empty recreational rooms for high-ranking officers (such as himself) and visiting dignitaries (rare, and very much discouraged). The hour was late. It was well into gamma shift for the stormtroopers and the few officers in duty. He was alone. It was the status quo.

He checked the chronometer on the wall (mandatory, the Empire believes in efficiency), and took a swig of the whiskey that he’d specially prepared for this occasion. Some time passed. He checked the time again.

The door slides open, reveals another man, flanked by two regular stormtroopers. Krennic spared them a glance, acknowledged the white-clad stormtroopers with a barely perceptible nod, and they returned the gesture with a brief salute. They left. The man shuffles awkwardly for a bit before stepping gingerly into the room, the door closing behind him like the jaw of some archaic beast.

“Director Krennic,” He says, might as well been saluting, as the stormtroopers before him. Krennic looked him over—took close note over his short beard and the look in his dark eyes, the look that has become his old friend Galen Erso—and gave him a light scoff. He downed some more of his whiskey.

“Spare me the formalities,” Krennic told him, leaning back on his seat. “Take a seat, Galen.”

The scientist might as well shuffled awkwardly once more, but he was no longer that boy. Resigned, he slowly made his way over, sat opposite Krennic. On the table between them was an unused chess board, Krennic’s glass, his gloves, an empty glass, and the rest of the whiskey in a decanter. To their right side—a viewing window which offered a stunning view of Eadu’s restlessness in form of endless storms.

Between them, only the void. Only the void, and the weight of the past, inscribed into their names and their eyes and their bones. It speaks in whispers and snippets of memories.

“You don’t have your personal detail with you,” Galen remarked, and Krennic was mildly surprised—not by the content of his remark, but by the other not directly asking what is this all about. Sometimes Krennic felt like he sensed that there was something going on underneath Galen’s placid surface, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. And he was fairly confident that he knew his old friend—knew him enough that he’d crushed him with what happened in Lahmu.

That, too, sits between them. The ghost of a woman—a _usurper_ —and a life left behind. _You’ll never win_.

“Oh, they’re close by,” The Advanced Weapons Research Director said, suppressing a grin. “Close enough, but out of sight.”

A lie, but a plausible one.

“I thought so,” his old friend says, absent-mindedly, with a slight nod. Silence falls between them, as it must between old friends and those with a shared past. Galen started fiddling with a piece from the chess board, a black rook. Krennic poured himself more whiskey. Neither seemed very keen to embark on a conversation, but it was easy to affect casual disinterest.

“What is this all about, Orson?” Galen finally asked, not looking him in the eye, but instead kept his gaze fixed on the board in front of him. He was studying it with a dispassionate interest of a scientist trying to pass time. Krennic, in turn, was studying Galen, with the same kind of interest. But not to pass time. Not _only_ to pass time.

He let a certain amount of silence fall—giving the question a really good hanging—before answering, one naked hand curled round the glass, swirling the liquid within. “Not work.”

It was a loaded answer, one that could be interpreted in a myriad of ways. While Galen was rearranging the pieces on the board to suit his needs, playing war, Krennic turned his attention to the storm outside.

He used to derive a tremendous amount of comfort from being in the company of the other. That comfort still existed, as of now, but only in residual amounts. The rest? The void, he thought, was between everything.

He wondered if his old friend felt the same way.

“I would never peg you as the nostalgic type,” Galen continued, still distracted, still purposefully distracting himself from focusing his attention on him. Krennic absently wondered what he saw when he looked at him now. Was it his dead wife, shot dead by one of his death troopers on Lahmu? Was it his missing daughter, still at large?

Was it the time before Coruscant, the time before Galen’s rescue, the time when they only had each other? Was there even such a time?

“I’m not,” Krennic retorted, cocking his head, assessing him. Galen stole a glance, met his for a second, quickly looked away again. For a fraction of a second, Krennic wanted nothing more than for Galen to pay attention to him, to focus on him as intensely as he does right now on those stupid chess pieces. It was an eerily familiar feeling. “This isn’t about nostalgia.”

“Then what _is_ it about?” the other snapped, abruptly meeting his gaze. Krennic was taken by surprise. “I apologise,” he continued, lowering his gaze apologetically, despite Krennic’s lack of spoken reaction. “It’s been…hard for me lately.”

“I understand,” Krennic said, affecting an emphatic tone, but it falls short from its intended effect. “But I told you, Galen, this isn’t about work.”

Galen’s hands move across the board, anything but lumbering. Krennic waited, patiently, sipping his whiskey, watching the storm empty its rage across the desolate landscape. He could only imagine the sound of it, the acoustics of grief. The room they were in—soundproofed and sterile, the vision of the Empire—were curiously devoid of sound, and, despite himself, despite his _beliefs_ , Krennic suddenly yearned for the salvation of noise, for the raging storm outside. There was scarcely anything in the galaxy that was half as terrible as the silence between two former friends.

What are they now? For that matter, what did they used to be? What will they be in the future? These are the questions that haunted the dreams of the Advanced Weapons Research Director, on the rare occasions that he dreamed.

For the most part, they were now subordinate and supervisor, and Krennic was content with that. It was a small price to pay, for his ambitions. But whether or not Galen was content with that, was another question.

“Graduation day,” Galen says, breaking his dark thoughts, knocking the white queen off the board. Krennic raised an eyebrow, leaned in ever so slightly, suddenly interested. “You were already in uniform. The weather was much like this one.”

Krennic immediately remembered, at least flashes of it. They were not in Coruscant for graduation, but rather Brentaal, the system that lends its name to the educational institution. It was a rather unusual weather, and it lasted until well after the ceremony.

“I remember you,” he says, much too soft for a man like him, eyes on some distant horizon outside where the storm raged and raged. “You and your research papers. Even then, you were already on your way of becoming a great scientist.”

Silence, and the storm. Neither men knows which one comes first.

“You nearly didn’t make it,” Galen continued, sweeping the board clean. “But you did.”

There was something hidden there, something Krennic couldn’t quite make out, an emotion that was as obscure as peaceable weather on Eadu. Perhaps it’s something along the lines of _I’m proud of you—_ **_was_ ** _proud of you_. Perhaps it was something else. Krennic poured himself another glass, and, on second thought, poured some on the empty glass, too.

“I could almost be the best one from our class year, you know,” he responded, watching Galen putting the pieces back on, this time in some obscure order. He picked up the nearest one with his free hand, observing it, before putting it back down. It was the white king.

“You? Best student?” his former friend says, scoffing lightly in good humour. Still not meeting Krennic’s gaze. “Please.”

“Hey, I was good.” Krennic pointed out, this time picking the nearest white pawn and moved it across the board. Galen glanced up, annoyed. “I helped you out with some things. And,” he can’t suppress his smile now, a conspiratorial one, “I helped you hook up with some girls.”

“That’s always your specialty,” Galen rebuked, gently, successfully knocking his white pawn off the board with his black one. “But not on graduation night.”

The silence that follows in spite of the storm outside (soundproofed, sterile) was laden with meaning, pregnant with the past. Krennic wondered why Galen chose to say that. Krennic wondered why Galen played along, at all.

Krennic wondered about Galen. It was the nature of things.

“The party,” he says, avoiding the obvious. “We were drunk. We talked about a lot of things.”

They always talked about a lot of things. Silence was a recent invention, another product of the Empire and the profound reordering of things. He briefly wondered how things began, if the future was somehow embedded in the layers of the past. He moved another pawn. Galen countered him deftly. He was always more agile than he ever gave himself credit for.

“You kissed me,” Galen stated, his tone dispassionate, as sterile as the soundproofed storm. For perhaps the first time that night, and perhaps the first time since the Lahmu episode, Krennic felt a pang of _something_. “You said that you wanted a future for us. Was this how you pictured it to be?”

The force of his words struck Krennic. Galen—his former friend, old lover, and everything in-between—wasn’t even looking at him, still, but he might as well have been staring him straight in the eye as he uttered it. He abruptly stood up, putting his whiskey down, heading towards the rain-lashed window. Perhaps there was solace in the storm. It was certainly better than the void between them.

“I helped you out,” he finally mustered, fighting the shock and the red hot fury, both warring inside of him. “I saved you from being a waste of talent. But _you left me_ ,” he declared, turning back slightly, nostrils flaring. Rage was a familiar thing. Rage was a familiar thing he embraced and wore like a victory banner. Rage was a familiar thing, and it was better than the alternative.

Galen was silent for a while, wearing a silence that matched the room and the void between them. He folded his hands in front of him, the small chess pieces on the table had been completely rearranged—all the white pieces had been taken off the board, all except the white king, to the side. There was a chasm in the midst of the board. Krennic doesn’t bother to guess what it could possibly mean, and he doesn’t care.

“Did I?” The scientist said, looking him square in the eye for once. There was an unwavering quality in his eyes, the same kind of conviction that he spotted in Lyra’s eyes right before she shot him. Right before his death troopers shot her dead. “Did I leave you or did I leave the person you thought you were, Krennic? Do you know who you are now? Is this how you pictured yourself to be when you spoke of the future to me?”

Galen was standing now, opposite him, the chasm between them growing into something resembling a toothed thing. Into something that resembled the past. Krennic crossed it without thinking, his fury taking over.

“Do you really think you know me, Galen?” he spat, snarling in his face. The Galen he knew would have been at least slightly intimidated. The Galen he knew would have deferred, would have flinched, would have tried to make peace. But, apparently, not this Galen. “Do you? You would be _nothing_ without me.”

It was something he would have regretted saying later on, if he had any regrets left. But Krennic had embarked on a warpath, and his only regret was that he didn’t do it sooner. Lyra, Galen’s marriage, the child, the growing chasm between them, their differing beliefs…Galen’s escape from Coruscant was the final straw. He felt, no, he _believed_ , that he had every right in the galaxy to be furious.

He doesn’t care if Galen feels differently.

“Have you ever listened to yourself speaking?” Galen responded, quietly, much too quietly. Krennic wanted to hit him, wanted to punch him in the face, wanted to do anything and everything that could provoke his anger. But not this. Not his quiet judgement, the surefire knowledge that the door to _what has been_ between them has been bolted and barred from him forever. “You are more machine than man, now. Look at you,” he shook his head, sadly, quietly resigned, and the strange _tenderness_ of it would have broken Krennic’s heart, if he still had any left. “I don’t know you anymore, Orson.”

He sat down, then, and Krennic—Krennic raged. It was the only thing he knew. The only thing he ever knew how to _be_ . He stood there, fists curled, not quite knowing what to do with his former friend (ex-lover? enemy? despised subordinate? this is where terminology fails to capture what has transpired, and what is now transpiring, between them). Not quite knowing what to do with _himself_.

And then, impulsively, once more crossing the interminable distance between them: “Can a machine do this?”

He kissed Galen, to the other’s apparent surprise, knuckles curled violently on his shoulders. An open-mouthed kiss, raw and messy, and he doesn’t care much of anything, forgetting about the project, the storm, the kyber crystals, the void. Lahmu and a dead wife. A missing child. Who they were to each other now. Contrary to his insistence, his insolent passion, Galen’s response was a soft undertone, the promise of sunlight that Krennic always remembered. Then: they were young, untouched by the war or the horrors of the galaxy (for the most part), Galen’s dreams like stars, his fingers arranging them into marvellous constellations.

Now: a storm outside, a top-secret research faculty, a void between them. A Director in the Imperial Intelligence and a head researcher of his, meeting in the after hours. The past stood between them. It always had.

It couldn’t work. It doesn’t work. Galen already pulled away, the doors to his labyrinthine mind already closing. Something flickered in the depths of his eyes for a moment, like a deep-sea creature, flickered and then disappeared. Krennic thought it was sadness.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he remarked, tinged with the same emotion that Krennic glimpsed in his eyes a moment ago. He was withdrawing, receding, and Krennic _felt_ it. Krennic felt it so strongly. He wanted to tell him, his old lover, his former friend: _come back_. But he swallowed the words.

“That night after graduation,” Galen continued, already leaving, was about to leave. “I held you.”

His gaze fell on Krennic, then, something inscrutable, something no longer his. Perhaps was _never_ his in the first place, although Krennic could never admit it. The void sings its victory hymn.

“Goodnight, Director.” he says, simply, finally.

And then he left. Krennic was alone with the storm, at last, barely hearing the door close behind him, barely in the state of mind to give Galen two stormtroopers to accompany him (not for protection, a voice in his mind says, but for _compliance_ ). Nothing seems to register for a long, long time, which lasted only for a short while.

None of it makes any sense. Galen’s whiskey sits there, untouched, the colour of tarnished gold, and he swept the glass off the table, injuring his hand in the process when one of the shards cut him. The pain barely registered, either.

He poured himself another glass, barely sparing a glance at the oddly arranged chess board. Very well, he thought, if Galen was determined to make himself his enemy, then it could be arranged.

This is war, after all, and the void—the storm, the chasm, their shared past—means nothing. His project would put a swift end to all in its completion.

And Orson Krennic could live with that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> That's a wrap, guys! Thank you for reading, and this is definitely not the end of my career in writing this ship. Comments & suggestions welcome, hmu on Tumblr @orsonkraennic <3


End file.
